


Crushing

by epkitty



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even knowing the future, we cannot always prevent it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crushing

**Author's Note:**

> Written after the release of the fourth book.

There stood the boy. Not what he expected.

Just a boy. Thin. Sort of . . . scraggly. Dark angry hair. Like his father. Bright vibrant eyes. Like his mother. Ragged old scar. From Voldemort. Clumsy glasses, clumsy clothes: even tailor-made at Malkin’s, they sat ill on his too-thin boy form.

He stood there, like his soon-to-be classmates. They huddled fearfully together, a mass of dark robes, shivering. From the cold cross-lake journey. From anxiety and fear. Trembling with anticipation. Which house? Which House? Perhaps some of them even realized that the next few moments would determine the course of their lives.

Among them, unsure and proud and nervous, the very shadow of his father: Harry Potter.

Sitting in his cold air of detachment, he could see it, he could feel it, that mark… a tag, a label, a sign shouting out in love and forgotten remembrance, ‘I lived! I’m different! I stride through world knowing I changed it, knowing I will change it again! I lived!’ And seeing and feeling this, he saw so much more. A boy, already marked with such profound hate and fierce love. A boy soon to become a man—much too soon.

Just a boy? Only another student? No. There was no ‘just’ or ‘only’ about that child, nothing so insignificant.

And then, oh those emerald eyes, shocking not in their mossy color or their shining innocence, but in their age-old wisdom, turned on him. It was with that look, a silent and complete appraisal, that a flash of pain, white hot and sizzling, shot through his arm like a lash of poison. It was a sudden onslaught after years of silence, and old unused teachings kicked in on command. Don’t grab it, don’t flinch, don’t twitch a muscle. If you do not show the pain, then the pain is not real.

So, of course, that vile man in the vile turban talking to him saw not the slightest sign of discomfiture. But he did see the stunned blink and minute widening of black eyes when the boy flinched and grasped his own mark, a look of pain on all-too-expressive features.

That’s when he knew. The war would begin again, and soon. He had known it would. Eventually.

Well, eventually had come.

“Gryffindor!” the old hat proclaimed. It was expected. And yet, somehow demoralizing, because even in the dark corner, far away and still too close, he could see the craving, the ambition, a terrible cunning. A waste.

So soon it would begin, so soon. Not the teaching of a student, but the molding of a soldier, a warrior. And that… boy; he hadn’t the slightest clue. Of what would be. Of what would come. Of what the world would demand and what he would supply.

A hero.

But sitting, still and silent in his own dark corner, he knew. Oh yes, Snape knew. He knew his part. He knew what would come. He knew what would be demanded of not only the innocent but also of himself.

A score of unacknowledged sacrifices. In the form of time and money and pain and pride and finally, his life.

= = = = =

The End


End file.
